Lea Wait's Blog, page 290

Four Principles of Book Promotion

Hi. Barb here.

So, on my last turn here at Maine Crime Writers, Inc., I wrote a post that went a little viral–Four Lies Book Publicists Will Tell You. And by viral, I don’t mean You-Tube kitten viral. I mean it pinged around our little, itty, bitty corner of the universe for a few days. I add this caveat, because being realistic is one of the things this post is about.

At the end of that post, I promised to write another that focused on what I think you should do to promote your book, not what you shouldn’t. It seemed only right to add to the conversation in a constructive way and not just shoot ideas down. Four Principles of Book Promotion is the companion piece to Four Lies.

Apology: First off, I need to apologize to book publicists. As one of them pointed out in the comments section of the original post, I used publicists as a stand-in for all book marketing types and gurus. Believe me, you can get absolutely terrible advice from many, many quarters. And, as Jane Friedman noted in her comment, most of it will come from your fellow aspiring and about-to-be-published authors, who pass myths-and-legends around like hopped up amphetamine freaks trading tips about where to get the next fix. (My words, not Jane’s.) A post about the Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt your fellow writers pass around could go on for days.

My Bona Fides: So how do I get off offering advice anyway? Just to be clear, here’s my story in a nutshell. I published my first mystery, The Death of an Ambitious Woman, in 2010 with a small press (Five Star, which is a division of a giant company best known for textbooks, Cengage). In 2012, I signed a three book contract with Kensington (a medium-sized, family-owned publisher best known for genre fiction) and the first book in my Maine Clambake Mystery series came out in September 2013. Clammed Up debuted and spent four weeks on the B&N in-store mass market paperback bestseller list. My agent called it, “about the best launch I could have imagined.” Boiled Over came out in 2014 and Musseled Out will launch later this month. Last August, Kensington renewed the series for three more books.

So, I’ve had solid, but certainly not earth-shattering success. I’ve met my personal goals, which were to preserve time to write and to do well enough to get the opportunity to have more books published. Judge that as you will and filter what I tell you here with that knowledge.

I’ve thought long and hard about how to explain what I think you should do to promote a book. There are so many ways to attack it, and goodness knows, millions, maybe billions of words have already be sent out to the universe on the subject. I decided the best first way to tackle the subject was describe the principles that underpin my promotional efforts. I didn’t understand them and certainly couldn’t have articulated them when Clammed Up came out. And something will happened to shift or add to my perceptions tomorrow. But this is what I believe today

Four Principles of Book Promotion

1) Find your niche. In my first post, I introduced this graphic.

As I wrote at the time, this graphic is not to scale. It would be incredibly more discouraging if it was.

Your job as an author is to find out where the people in that bullseye hang out and persuade them to read your book. There is an even smaller group of people within that bullseye who are reading and writing and talking about your type of book all the time. They are the mavens. If you are traditionally published, your publisher is probably already all over them. But you are a person, not a corporation, and people relate to people, so you should get to know them, too.

Yes, it’s true that it is possible to over-spill your niche and go on to meteoric success. We all know the stories. The Hunt for Red October was published by the tiny Naval Institute Press and blew up when Ronald Reagan told a press conference he loved it. Fifty Shades of Grey started out as erotic fan fiction. But here’s the thing, they blew up because they first got people talking about them and passing them around within their niche.

Unless your book went to auction and is being positioned by your publisher as a national bestseller out of the gate, when you’re new, getting the most you possibly can out of your niche is the best, most efficient place to put your promotional efforts.

I was lucky enough to have the second book in my series in both Woman’s World and First Magazine for Woman, general interest magazines, each with a circulation of over a million. The mentions were positive, it was a thrill for me. I will always be grateful. But, first, it’s humbling to see how tiny and hidden the book section of a general interest magazine can be. And second, the results, at least for my kind of book, were infinitesimal compared to the results from a BookBub eblast to people who had already proactively identified themselves as wanting to hear about mysteries that are on sale.

My point is a message to a targeted market beats a mention to an undifferentiated market every time.

The people I’m telling you to look for are even more valuable than the people who’ve given permission to BookBub to send them an e-mail everyday. Because the people I’m talking about will actually read your book. The only way a book develops true buzz is if people are reading it. People buying it and putting it in a pile on their nightstand or in a maze of unread books on their Kindle is pretty nearly useless to you, especially if you are writing a series. When I was in the software business, we used to call sales like these “shelfware.” They barely counted because we knew we wouldn’t be getting any license renewals or selling any add-on business.

How do you find your niche? Find out who’s talking about books like yours. Pick a few similar titles that have come out recently. What book bloggers reviewed it? What Goodreads groups are discussing it? Are there Facebook groups, listservs, conferences focused on your type of book? To find readers, act like the reader you already are, but maybe a shade more fanatical. Go on the hunt.

2) Be a person. Ramona DeFelice Long is laughing because she knows this is my go-to advice for people about how to behave on social media. But it is also my advice about how to behave in general. Be a person first, and a reader second, and a writer third. Chances are you are all those things in more or less that order anyway. In other words, be your authentic self.

Books are intangible products. In their print form that may appear not to be true, but people aren’t buying the physical object, they are buying the story. And they can’t experience the story before they read it. So they count on various factors to help them decide whether your book is going to be a worthwhile use of their money and time. The most important deciding factor is if they’ve read another book of yours and loved it. As I said in Part I, your book sells your next book. The second most important factor is recommendations from people they trust. The trust part is important, because unlike a tangible product, readers cannot hold your story in their hands. They are taking a leap of faith when they commit to it.

Intangibles are sold person to person, via trusted relationships, be it online relationships or carbon-based ones. That’s why it’s so horrible and jarring when your first interaction with an author is “Buy my book,” or “Like my page.” It’s a request, but it feels like a demand. Your reaction is visceral and along the lines of, “I don’t know you, Bud. I don’t have any reason to trust you, and I’m starting not to like you.”

So your first interactions with people should be person-to-person, reader-to-reader.

Once you’ve found your niche, participate. Like a person. Like a reader, and finally like a writer. Once you’ve established a relationship, you can ask, nicely, if a book blogger would like an Advance Reader Copy of your book. Or mention that your book is being discounted this month. Or point out a great review. But be sparing of that stuff. A little goes a long way. Remember that guy in your high school class who became an insurance salesman? You liked him and even trusted him, but you only wanted to hear so much about insurance. As the author, you’re uniquely situated to help people understand why they would enjoy reading your book. But first you have to be a person they trust.

3) Seek safety in numbers. In Lies, I talked about the value of being a part of a network of writers. I can’t tell you how much that has helped me. Doing a bookstore or library appearance alone, when your name is not known, can be fairly horrifying. Doing it with a friend or three, will increase the crowd, (they attract a few people, you attract a few people) and take some of the pressure off. And for a lot of writers, talking about how great someone else’s book is, is much easier than blowing their own horn.

Some experts pooh-pooh the notion of group writer blogs like this one, but Maine Crime Writers and Wicked Cozy Authors, the other group blog I am a part of, have been invaluable to me. It’s not so much the daily blog itself, though that is the foundation. It’s the opportunity to create an umbrella brand that is larger than yourself, and which enables you to do things like have a joint newsletter, set up events or have a much larger and more visible presence at conferences.

Musicians tour together. Comedians have opening acts. Writers are no different. We may write alone, but we can and should promote in groups.

4) Calm the Heck Down. There’s a lot of reasons novelists on the cusp of publication are quivering piles of goo. (I write about some of them on Wicked Cozy Authors here.) You love your book. You want to do the absolute best you can to promote it. And you should.

But you should also Calm the Heck Down. You’ve wanted this for a really long time, and now it’s here. Enjoy the ride.

Because here’s what I’ve concluded, after observing my own efforts and those of my friends. All your promotion will probably only move the needle on sales by about 10 or 15%.

At the end of the day, you can’t outrun the appeal of your story to your target audience, and the distribution capability of your publisher (however you choose to publish). Those two things are determinant.

Remember way back there in the post, when I gave you my bona fides? When people ask me why I think Clammed Up was successful, here’s what I tell them. My publisher got me a cover that people really responded to and paid for terrific placement in Barnes & Noble. (At least in the ones I went in. Publishers actually don’t talk to you about this stuff much when you’re the author) After seven months on the market, my publisher put the ebook edition on sale and got it on BookBub.

Those efforts resulted in the vast bulk of the sales.

What did I do? I wrote the best book I was capable of writing at the time. The book was nominated for several awards, and that kept people talking about it. I made sure my friends, family, fellow writers and the tiny fan base I’d accumulated from Death of an Ambitious Woman knew about the book. I went where people asked me to go, guest blogged in my niche, visited with Goodreads groups and book clubs that had, independently of me, decided to read the book.

My efforts were incremental, best case.

As I said in the original post, now that I have fans, I treasure them. I make sure they have multiple ways to find me, and that I have multiple ways to communicate with them. But there is only so much you can do to promote your book.

So relax. The odds are very small that you alone can turn your book into a bestseller. But the odds are also very small that you can truly screw it up. Take you job seriously, but have fun with it.

Because if you’re not having fun, why are you doing this at all?

Fondue Days

My first out-of-college job was as a first level manager at Western Electric, then the manufacturing and supply arm of the Bell System, in downtown New York City. It was the spring of 1968. Students were protesting, the World Trade Center was rising, and the Vietnam War and assassinations in the United States filled the newspapers.

I was the only management woman in the public relations department, and I was twenty years old. I had a lot to learn.

I learned to write to different audiences: not just executive speeches, in the style of a particular man (all the executives were, of course, men,) but also press releases, with both words and pictures. Employee newspaper articles. Employee films and videos. I spoke to high school classes in New York City about why they should apply to Ma Bell for jobs after they graduated. And I edited articles about engineering and community service activities. When the telephone company operators went on strike, I worked twelve hours a day as an information operator.

But it wasn’t all work. Lower Manhattan was an exciting place, and the young men I worked with (including the one I’m now married to,) often took long lunches, often with alcoholic libations included. In the summer we bought sandwiches and walked over the Brooklyn Bridge and ate on Brooklyn Heights. We headed to Chinatown regularly. And my favorite destination was the tiny restaurant up a narrow staircase above The International Wine and Cheese Shop on Chambers Street.

The first floor was filled with a world of cheeses, most of which I’d never heard of in suburbia. But the second floor was magic. Here a group of us would crowd around one or two tables, drink wine, and share raclette, or a pot or two of cheese fondue. When the cheese got thick, the owner would add more wine or Kirsch.

Lunches there tended to last a lot longer than an hour, and made for afternoons of low productivity.

But I fell in love with the place, the people … and the fondue.

I vowed to learn to make it myself, but with that restaurant so near, I only tried it a few times while I was living in New York.

But a few years later when my job was transferred to New Jersey I spent many evenings experimenting with different combinations of cheeses and wines. By the time my children were teenagers, cheese fondue was a favorite at our house … often followed (especially if we were entertaining) by chocolate fondue for dessert.

Fondue isn’t as popular as it once was. (I actually have an entire cookbook of fondue recipes.) And the couple of times I’ve ordered it in restaurants in the past ten years it didn’t approach the fondues of my memory.

Of course, that smoky second floor room on Chambers Street that smelled of cheeses from around the world was still my standard.

Unfortunately, that shop and restaurant are no longer.

But on a cold winter’s night in Maine, my husband and I sometimes share a pot of cheese fondue, and remember. And the memories warm us as much as does the fondue.

If you don’t have a favorite fondue recipe, here’s mine, for a classic taste. Enjoy!

(serves about 4 as main course … more as an appetizer)

1/2 pound shredded Switzerland Swiss cheese

1/2 pound shredded natural Gruyere cheese

1 clove garlic

1 1/2 cups dry white wine, e.g. Chablis — + more to drink

1 Tablespoon lemon juice

1 Tablespoon cornstarch

3 Tablespoons (or a bit more) Kirsch (Swiss cherry brandy)

pepper to taste

2 loaves Italian or French bread

Shred cheese. Cut bread into 1″ cubes with crust on one side. Rub fondue pot with cut garlic.

Note – although some recipes suggest melting the cheese in the fondue pot, I’ve found it’s easier to melt it on the stove, and then pour it into the (warmed) pot for serving.

Rub pan with cut garlic. Add wine to pan; heat. When wine is hot (not boiling) add lemon juice. Add shredded cheese by handfuls, stirring constantly with a wooden soon until cheeses are blended and melted. Bring to bubble briefly. Add seasonings, stirring until blended. Mix cornstarch with Kirsch; add to fondue and allow to boil another 15-30 seconds.

Serve and keep hot in fondue pot. Stir frequently; if it thickens too much, add wine.

Enjoy!

The Swiss have a tradition that if a piece of bread falls off your fork into the fondue pot, you get a kiss. Following that tradition is not required .. but does liven up the party. And no — that wasn’t a part of business lunches!

The Deliberations of the Unconscious Mind: An English Major’s Meditation

Just some twisted roots, or a monster? Old bones? Something waiting to come alive?

Kate Flora: Back when I was in college, shortly after the Mayflower landed, I wrote a paper on flower imagery in one of Shakespeare’s plays. I wondered then, as I have often wondered as a reader, whether the author consciously and deliberately played with flowers and wove those images throughout the play. Indeed, I’ve always wondered how many of the things that writers do with metaphor and simile, and with recurring images and themes, are deliberate on the part of the writer, and how much simply happens on an unconscious, or subconscious level. I don’t have an answer for other writers, but I’m beginning to discover an answer for myself.

It is one of the wonders of this craft I’ve chosen that the learning curve is infinite. Knowing that we all once faced that first blank page with terror, and overcame that fear, and wrote on to our first “The End,” helps me understand that we are a community of learners at all levels. It is a learning process that never stops, and thus, when I’m not overwhelmed, or discouraged with a difficult plot point, or grouching about my lack of greater success, I’m rather awed by it. I’m currently working on either my twenty-fifth or twenty-sixth book, and it’s still exciting to be doing something that is never the same twice, that always has some new challenge to present and some new insight to give. I will come to understand what I’m doing on one level and then have to learn it all over again as the works grow more complex and interwoven, and my characters, with whom I’ve open spent decades observing their development, grow and change and become deeper and different than they were years ago when I first began to write them.

The ways in which the conscious writer, the one who plants the clues and slowly discloses the plot points, interacts with the unconscious writer, is repeatedly revealed to me as I’m working my way through my fifth Joe Burgess mystery, And Led Them Thus Astray. While I’m trying to work out where the shooter was standing, and who was shot first, what gun to use, and how to approach the scene without destroying essential evidence, I see something else happening in the work. I see that while the mystery is unfolding according to police procedural conventions, something else is happening in the visual and temporal aspects of the book that I did not plan.

Even as Joe Burgess drives through a gray late afternoon and gets a call to a shooting scene, he is also moving from day into night, from light into darkness. And as that scene unfolds and he discovers the enormity and complexity of a scene involving multiple victims, daylight fades away. Discoveries are made with flashlights, through small points of light in a vast and unknown darkness. The search team in the woods, seen from a distance, are like fireflies. And when morning comes, what ought to be a lovely late May weekend is smothered in a chilling Maine fog that won’t let up. Light is dimmed. Sounds are muffled. Visibility is limited. The investigators’ discoveries about their shooter, and their shooter’s multiple levels of deception, will take place in a natural world that has deviated from the normal and obscured the light just as the killer has.

Did I consciously plan this? Absolutely not. Not on the “make an outline” or “consider how characters are revealed to the reader” or “crank up the suspense” level of crime writing. But did I plan this? Absolutely. Because this, for me, is what writing is about. It’s about using all of the things we’ve read and experienced that make fiction work. It’s about trusting our instincts and our imaginations, and putting ourselves in the chair, and in the zone, where writing begins to flow—consciously and unconsciously—into a deeper and more complex kind of storytelling.

Sometimes, when I give an author talk, someone will ask the basic question: What is the book about? What do I want a reader to take away? And the answer happens on many levels. The book is about the dangers to those we ask to do the hard job of policing in society, and how to balance the higher calling of serving and protecting with the desire to live a normal life. It’s about balancing responsibility to family with the responsibility to the weak and helpless and the victims of crime. The book is about people believing they’re entitled to deviate from the social contract.

And if someone were to ask about that imagery of light and darkness? Well, that’s the story of the investigation—from darkness with only pinpricks of light and insight to bringing the facts into the light and restoring order to the world. It is also about the basic struggle between good and evil, and pushing back the forces of darkness. Pretty obvious, right? And yet, the way it plays out can be fascinating.

Back to the flower images. Yes. This is what an English major thinks about when she cannot leave her desk and go out into the garden and the hellebore is still buried under snow. And when she’s so deeply immersed in a story that the quotidian seems unreal and the imagined utterly real. I can feel that clammy fog on my skin. Hopefully, someday soon, so will you.

Weekend Update: April 4-5, 2015

Next week at Maine Crime Writers there will be posts by Kate Flora (Monday), Lea Wait (Tuesday), Barb Ross (Wednesday), Kate Flora (Thursday), and Vaughn Hardacker (Friday). Please note that next weekend most of us will be at Maine Crime Wave. We hope to post from there during the weekend and will definitely have a Crime Wave wrap-up on Monday, April 13.

In the news department, here’s what’s happening with some of us who blog regularly at Maine Crime Writers:

from Kaitlyn Dunnett: If you read my last post, Talking Heads, you know that I came in waaaay short of my goal of 75,000+ words on the first draft of the tenth Liss MacCrimmon mystery, Kilt at the Highland Games. As in only 50,829 words. Good news. I’ve just finished the second draft (but by no means the last one) and the word count now stands at a healthy 76,035. Whew! Lots of tweaking left to do, and probably some cutting. Most likely I’ll discover a continuity problem or two. I’ll definitely have to do a search for words I’ve overused. But this was the big hurdle. From here on in, I don’t have to put so much pressure on myself because I know I’ve already met the basic requirements set forth in my contract. I know. I know. It’s all mind games. But I still feel as if a tremendous burden has just been lifted.

From Barb Ross: On Thursday, April 9 from 10:00 am to noon,  Dorothy Cannell, Kate Flora and I will be at the Skimdompha Library, “Chats with Champions” speaking on the panel “Three Maine Mystery Writers Share Secrets.” Would love to see you there! 184 Main St. Damariscotta, Maine.

On Saturday, April 11, many of the Maine Crime Writers along with many other great Maine mystery authors will be at the Maine Crime Wave at the Glickman Library at the University of Southern Maine in Portland. You can register up through Tuesday, here. There are also readings and dinners on Friday night.

 

 

An invitation to readers of this blog: Do you have news relating to Maine, Crime, or Writing? We’d love to hear from you. Just comment below to share. Don’t forget that comments are entered for a chance to win our wonderful basket of books and the very special moose and lobster cookie cutters.

 

And a reminder: If your library, school, or organization is looking for a speaker, we are often available to talk about the writing process, research, where we get our ideas, and other mysteries of the business. Contact Kate Flora: mailto: kateflora@gmail.com

Rolling Rally Comes to Maine: Presenting the Agatha Short Story Finalists

Kaitlyn Dunnett/Kathy Lynn Emerson here, along with Barb Goffman, Edith Maxwell, and Art Taylor. All of us are finalists for the Agatha Award for traditional mysteries in the short story category. Art is the author of two of the nominated stories. You’ll find links to read them all at the Malice Domestic website. Just click on “awards” and scroll down until you come to the short story nominees.

I’m the only one of us who persists in calling this a rolling rally. No, we don’t have the duck boats used when Boston celebrates championships with the Patriots and the Red Sox, but as far as I’m concerned, we’re all winners. As a group, we’ve been on a blog tour, talking about short story writing. Today we’re here at Maine Crime Writers to answer the following question:

O ne piece of advice often given to writers of short stories is to keep it simple by focusing on one situation, one setting, one point of view, and only a limited number of characters. How hard is it to stick to this “rule” and what were the results when/if you’ve broken it? 

Art Taylor:

Keeping it simple can be good advice in many ways—especially when writing within the often unforgiving constraints of a short story, which doesn’t provide much room for error—and I personally love the tightness of a good single-setting, single-situation story with some tense interplay between just a couple of characters. But more often I find myself trying to stretch the boundaries a little bit, trying to weave together multiple perspectives on the same situation or fold in significant bits of a character’s distant past (or imminent future) or pile on extra layers to what might seem like a straightforward situation. With “The Odds Are Against Us,” for example, I started out with a simple conversation between two old friends, told solely from the perspective of one of them, but I hope that the way the other man keeps keeps thwarting the narrator’s goals and intentions, keeps shifting the direction of the story being told, and keeps bringing up forgotten bits of their shared past—I hope all of that complicates and deepens the “one situation” of the story and adds even more to the already hefty moral weight of the decision the narrator faces, the choice he makes. The success of a short story, to my mind, isn’t just how tightly you can trim it down but more importantly how much can be packed into that little bit of space— not just the precise detailing of what happens during the story but those key glimpses of the characters’ lives before the start of the story and after the end of it too, all those necessary hints of the larger world beyond the edge of the page.

Edith Maxwell:

I don’t find it too hard to stick to this rule—but let’s call it a recommendation, shall we? My Agatha-nominated story, “Just Desserts for Johnny,” has one point of view, one essential setting, definitely one situation, and exactly two named characters, so that was pretty easy. I wrote a story a few years ago (“Yatsuhashi for Lance”) that started in Japan and ended in the US a decade later, but the single POV made it work. It was also only one situation, that is, one crime, whether real or perceived.

In my first historical short story, “A Fire in Carriagetown,” I did have to rein in the number of characters. What I didn’t realize when I wrote it was that it would turn into a full-length novel (Delivering the Truth, coming out next year from Midnight Ink). Maybe I was subconsciously setting up for a longer work. I’ve written two other historical shorts set in 1888 Amesbury, Massachusetts, but they haven’t gone overboard, character-wise, maybe because I already know I have everybody I need in the book. Come to think of it, “Pickled,” a kind of pilot for my Country Store Mysteries series, which debuts in November under the pen name Maddie Day, also initially had too many characters, and also ended up as part of the first novel, Flipped for Murder.

Most important, the story needs as many people as it needs. If there’s anybody who walks through but isn’t critical to the story, you first remove their name, and then see if their action can either merge with someone else’s or be deleted entirely.

As for crimes/situations—I’ve never written a story with more than one. And while I’ve also never written from more than one point of view, even in a book-length work, I plan to try that out. I doubt a short story could tolerate more than two, but hey, I would love to be surprised!

Barb Goffman:

I’ve never heard this “rule” expressed this way before, but it’s good advice. Limiting the number of characters, for instance—each character should have a job to do. If a character isn’t there for a specific reason, cut him. And if one character could do what you have two doing, merge them.

Sticking to one situation is smart, too. When I write a short story, I come up with a conflict (a “situation”). My main character reacts to the conflict and drives the plot. For instance, in my Agatha-nominated story “The Shadow Knows,” Gus hates long winters and believes his town’s groundhog, Moe, is responsible for them. That’s the story’s conflict/situation. Gus reacts to it by deciding he needs to get rid of Moe. And the plot unfolds from there. If, in addition to hating winter, Gus also was low on cash so he decided to rob a bank, that would be an entirely different situation, which should result in a different story. I wouldn’t have the two things occur in the same story—that split focus would annoy the reader and undermine the story’s focus—unless Gus figured out how robbing the bank would enable him to both get cash and get rid of Moe. In that scenario having two situations/conflicts would work because they would become entwined. More power to an author who can do that.

As to how many settings and points of view are in a story, I think—as with characters—you should have as many as the story calls for, but no more. I wouldn’t have characters jetting from one city to another for no reason, but that’s because characters should do things for a plot-related reason, not because multiple settings are inherently bad. In my story “Murder at Sleuthfest,” my main character travels to and from the Sleuthfest convention. Attending the convention is vital to the plot, so she goes. If it weren’t vital, there would be no reason for her to attend, so she wouldn’t go. Similarly with point of view, if I needed two points of view to tell a story, then I would use two points of view. But I wouldn’t have more than two unless I needed them.

Ultimately, every decision about story structure should be driven by the plot. (Character should drive the plot, but plot should drive the structure.) Don’t try to be fancy. Try to write the best story you can, keeping things as tight as you can, by limiting your conflict (situation), setting, point of view, and number of characters to just as many as you need for your story to enfold. I haven’t broken this “rule” myself, but I’ve seen it happen. I edit for a living, and when I see it, I ask the author, “Why is this here? Why is it happening? How does it serve the plot?” By helping authors focus, I help them create tighter, better stories. And that is the ultimate goal: good stories.

Kathy Lynn Emerson:

One of my first published short stories came out of my affection for a fairy tale, “The Twelve Dancing Princesses.” In “The Reiving of Bonville Keep,” included in the anthology Murder Most Medieval, I created a backstory where an English baron kept marrying to get himself a son and ended up with twelve daughters, the youngest of whom would have been seriously hurting for a dowry and therefore lacking in marriage prospects. Then I threw in a Scottish knight who was married to one of the older girls and came back to Bonville Keep after her death to collect their daughter, who was being cared for by the younger sister. Throw in an evil stepmother and a couple of greedy henchmen and you have a heck of a lot of characters, as well as a complicated situation. To make matters worse, since I didn’t know any better back then, I used two point-of-view characters. Short fiction doesn’t usually get as much feedback as novels, but one of the reviews for this anthology singled this one out as a favorite and another historical novelist, someone I greatly admire, emailed me years after it was published to tell me that it was one of her all-time favorite short stories, so I guess I must have done something right.

I’m pretty sure I make things a lot harder on myself by not keeping things simple, but when characters take on a life of their own, what’s a writer to do?

 

If you’d like to read what we’ve said at the other stops on the blog tour, here are the links.

February 20 at Criminal Minds

March 6 at Wicked Cozy Authors

March 17 at Writers Who Kill

and still to come, April 20 at The Stiletto Gang

The Prankster’s Favorite Day and Thoughts on Writing Comfortably

There’s nothing better than a really well timed ‘Gotcha.’ While I’ve played my share of April Fools jokes, the best ones have come in my library career. It started with an after Halloween sale when I worked at the old Augusta Mental Health institute. That was in the days when LaVerdiere’s was the main drug store chain in the state. I happened to be in there the day after Halloween when all the candy, costumes and related merchandise was half off. I spotted a battery powered screaming doormat and bought it, thinking that I’d use it when the holiday came around again.

Dang! Another body to hide.

I’d had the husband of the chief psychologist build me a lightweight book return that was installed beside the desk. I had several other places throughout the institute where I taught or retrieved journals for copying, so having a secure return was important. A couple days before April Fools, I realized that it might be fun to put the doormat in the book box and see how people reacted when it screamed at them. The first person to drop off books was a very straight laced psychologist who hardly ever showed any emotion. He dropped off a couple heavy items and turned to walk away. I was in the stacks where I could see him, but not be seen myself. When the scream came, there was two inches of daylight between the soles of his shoes and the carpet. While I caught other people that day, his reaction was the best.

When I took over as head librarian in Boothbay Harbor, I inherited a weekly newspaper column. When April Fools Day came around, I was prepared. Everyone knew the library needed repairs and would eventually need a major renovation. I capitalized on that by writing a column that told the story about how during an environmental inspection, the federal government had discovered a family of Barlow’s Spotted Skinks living in the library cellar. Since these little creatures were on the endangered species list, their presence in the library meant that we would have to close down until a plan to relocate them safely was devised.

Once Upond A Time

I went on to write about a reclusive Asian millionaire named Lirpa Loof, who had a large estate in Edgecomb, the next town on the peninsula. Mr. Loof was going to cover the cost of moving all items from the library to a specially constructed barn on his property, would pay for hourly shuttle buses from the library to his estate and would have his groundskeeper rearrange the gardens so people could read outside in comfort. The reaction was completely unexpected. I thought most everyone would catch the fact that Lirpa Loof was April Fool spelled backward, but apparently not. By the time the dust settled, I had fooled three library board members and two selectmen. I continued to come up with a new prank every year, but the skink one was the best.

When the opportunity to write a weekly column for the Sebasticook Valley newspaper opened up, I was really excited because I knew what a great marketing and P.R. Opportunity it was. When the first April Fools rolled around, I write about my long time friend Dah Nee Buoy. We had gone to Arizona State University together and while I had been fairly studious, Dah had pretty much majored in partying. Time after time, I ended up polishing, or in some cases completing written assignments for him.

Caution: Idiot Zone Ahead

He was always grateful and when we graduated, he said that when the opportunity came, he was going to pay me back ten times over. I chalked this up to youthful grandiosity. All I knew about Dah was that he came from some unpronounceable island in the South Pacific. It wasn’t long before I lost touch with him.

Fast forward thirty-five years. I get a registered letter from Dah telling me that his father, ruler of a small kingdom, has died, leaving him filthy rich and eager to make good on his promise. He wants me to help him set up the best library in the world. Money is no object, the letter says, and the job comes with a six figure income and free housing. Will I accept? Of course.

The paper hadn’t been out on the street for more than half an hour before the first wave of surprised and outraged patrons called or stormed into the library. They told me that I couldn’t leave. I told them to read my friend’s name backwards.

The absolute best prank came right after we spent a long weekend in California. I saw a small incubator in a gift shop with a baby blanket over the top, The sign beside it said “Please don’t disturb the baby rattler.” Of course, I knew what it was, having been snookered by a similar setup when I was a kid, I wrote a nice column about our trip and told readers that I had purchased an egg in a curiosity shop north of Los Angeles. I went on to tell how I smuggled it through security and had kept it warm all through the return flight. It was now incubating in the library. I encouraged everyone to stop in and view the baby rattler.

One of my volunteers brought in an old bassinet and a baby rattle. We put the rattle inside the bassinet and covered it with an old baby blanket. This time, the reaction was unexpected and hilarious. Somebody in Hartland read my column and completely freaked out, calling the county sheriff as well as the Maine game warden service. I was bringing a box of books up from the basement when two serious looking guys entered the building and asked for me. I identified myself and they asked if they could see the baby rattlesnake. I couldn’t help but burst out laughing as I explained that it was an April Fools Day joke and that nowhere in the article had I said I had a snake. They couldn’t decide whether they should be mad or foolish. There was a young dad trying to read to his four year old daughter while the exchange was taking place and by the time I had explained the situation, he was practically in tears he was laughing so hard.

Excuse me, how far it it to Lubec?

What do I have planned today? I’ll tell you in the comments section later today after it runs its course.

Regular readers of MCW know that I’ve struggled to write for a while, in part due to depression. I’m happy to report that the darkness has lifted and I’m working diligently on a new book, one that has been germinating in my head for several months. One thing I’ve noticed while writing this one is how much I got from devouring so many YA books in the past year. The dynamics and the emotional rollercoaster that are a big part of adolescence is present in the new book. In the process, I’ve come to some interesting conclusions that are worth sharing. Some may be helpful to you, others might not be. In any event, I hope for those reading this who aren’t successfully or frequently published, that some of my observations are useful.

First, hold onto the thought that you’re writing for yourself, not an anonymous audience. That piece comes later after you’ve finished the manuscript and it’s ready for semi-prime time. Second, I really believe it helps to block out concern that you might be writing the wrong way. I often think of writing as mental culinary arts. When you cook, you’re preparing a meal that had been cooked multiple times by multiple people, but will probably have a unique taste because of HOW you prepare it. Writing isn’t much different. When you read 150 young adult books a year, you notice certain plot elements will crop up in several books by different authors. What makes book A far more appealing than book B is the way the author ‘cooked’ the plot elements. If you’re like me, you can drive yourself nuts worrying about how a certain section or idea you’re adding sounds or seems like one in the book you read two weeks ago. That’s not unusual and I believe it happens to most, if not all writers. Shrug it off and keep writing.

Third is related to number two. Everyone approaches writing a book a bit differently, but in listening to authors or participating in writing workshops, patterns of development appear and unless you’re very comfortable with your development style, it’s easy to be swayed by what works for someone else if they’re selling it properly. What’s really at stake is how to be comfortable with what you settle on. Some people write a biography for every character, others sketch out the physical geography of the place where the book is set. These and many others work for different writers. What’s really critical is for you to meditate/think about/ponder your style and make sure you’re comfortable with it it makes the process smooth, productive and relatively anxiety free

For me, I need to be alone to write well and I need to have a bag of possibilities hanging on a hook in my brain. When everything is cooking, that bag goes into the shower with me in the morning because that’s where my best ‘new roads’ come into my head and from there into the bag. Lately, I’ve been so wrapped up in grabbing the new stuff that I forget that I’m taking a shower and shut the water off, only to realize that I neglected to rinse the soap out of my armpits, so back in I go.

Don’t be afraid to let your character utilize current technology. Skye Lundquist, my seventeen year old protagonist, is faced with the very real possibility that she’ll be moving from Long Beach, Ca. To Machias, Maine with her frequently freaked-out mother. If Mom wants to fully inherit the two million dollar estate that has been left to her, she needs to live in this lovely Victorian home for a full year in the town she left not long after Skye was born. Since Skye has only vague bits and pieces of memory from the time before she started school, her take on the possible move lies somewhere between terrifying and ideal. It’s terrifying because all she knows is Long Beach, but it’s ideal because of what happened to her at an end of school party the night before she finished her junior year that left her angry, humiliated and friendless. She lives for basketball, and thanks to the internet, she can research just how important basketball is in a remote part of Maine. (The answer, of course, is that it’s pretty damn important to real Mainers, so she’d likely start on the varsity team).

In less than two days of online searching, Skye has a copy of her great aunt’s obituary, has scoped out kids her own age on Facebook who are from the Machias area and has bought a six month membership in Classmates.com because they’ve digitized fifteen years worth of Machias High yearbooks. In the process of looking through them, she found individual shots of each member of the boys’ varsity basketball team and has developed a major crush on one of them. She takes this to a step unheard of just a few years ago, she sends him a friend request on Facebook. These things all are stuff that teens can and do these days. They show readers how different connecting to others and finding information can be these days, even for those who are internet newbies.

I’ll talk more about this book which I’ve given the working title of Singing the L.A. Blues On the Barrens in future columns.

Crime Wave Therapy or Self-help for the Mystery Minded

Our guest blogger today is writer Karla Whitney, sharing some of her writer’s journey and the value of conferences and community to a writer.

Back in April 2011, I attended Maine Crime Wave at University of Southern Maine. This was my first step in a self-induced program to face my fears. Although I’d written stacks of college curriculum and collaborated on writing and illustrating textbooks, I had secrets — files no one had seen — fiction, short stories, poetry, and an eighth draft of my first mystery novel. I was too afraid to submit my writing anywhere to anyone, because if I didn’t try, I didn’t risk rejection.

Toby Ball, Gerry Boyle, and Cornelia Reed shared a panel discussion about writing mysteries. During break, I bought Gerry Boyle’s “Port City Black & White”, and asked his advice to a fledgling. He recommended New England Crime Bake as a means of learning about the business, and getting involved in the writing community. He also said writers work very hard, it was tough and competitive to get published, but that if I was any good, and persisted, publication was attainable. He didn’t make it sound easy, but he did make it sound do-able.

Later that year, at my first Crime Bake, I felt enormous relief to meet like-minded adults who spend solitary hours upon days, inventing stories, solving crimes, hashing out words, anguishing over imaginary characters (and their pets), all inside their own mind’s eye. I was not alone and I was hooked.

At Crime Bake 2014, I met an agent from Fuse Literary. When I explained my current non-fiction project focused on art and design, she directed me to a colleague at her agency.

Researching http://www.fuseliterary.com/ I discovered ‘Short Fuse Guides’, just $1 each, written by Fuse agents. The guides are smart, savvy and practical, offering de rigueur tips for new and seasoned authors. Topics cover Query Letters, Book Proposals for Fiction and Non-fiction, Marketing, Promotion, Contracts, and more.

Appreciation is ‘feel good’ therapy that doesn’t cost a dime. Thanks are due to Crime Bake and Maine Crime Wave organizers, agents who listen to rapid-fire pitches, panelist who share their time and insights, Level Best Books editors for selecting quality stories and giving new writers a chance, Sisters In Crime and Mystery Writers of America-New England for providing community, and Maine Crime Writers for the range of ideas offered in this blog.

And thanks to Gerry Boyle for sound advice. Somewhere between my first Crime Wave and now, I ditched my fear of trying, applied what I learned in workshops, and tuned my inner ear to the muses. I’m still not crazy about rejection, but who is? Now I understand, like the habit of daily writing, it’s all part of the trade.

This year’s upcoming Crime Wave, sponsored by Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance (MWPA), is April 11th at University of Southern Maine. Panelists include Barbara Ross, Lea Wait, Kate Flora, Gayle Lynds, Brenda Buchanan, Kathy Lynn Emerson, Paul Dorion, Gerry Boyle, Sarah Graves, and more. For information, contact MWPA at www.mainewriters.org or call 207-228-8263.

Karla M Whitney’s first published mystery fiction, ‘More To The Point’, is included in Level Best Books Best New England Crime Stories 2015: Rogue Wave. She’s been drawing pictures, inventing stories, and turning them into books for decades. Her published work includes textbooks, editorial articles, illustrations, layout designs and comics. A second mystery novel percolates, while she polishes short stories and delves into another non-fiction adventure. She’s a member of SINC and MWA, and teaches art, writing and graphic design.

As the Crowd Turns

When I was a young girl, I often came home from school to find my mother standing in the living room at her ironing board, a cigarette in hand, and the television playing her favorite (and if I recall correctly, only) soap opera, As the World Turns.

Vicki Doudera here. I myself never really got hooked on soaps, even in the eighties when many of my friends were addicted to the latest twists and turns in the saga of Luke and Laura, two of the favorite characters on All My Children. Of course I’ve seen a few, and one thing they all seem to share are shifting loyalties. Put simply, the characters’ relationships change with the flick of a channel.  They’re a fickle bunch, these soap opera folks, and just when you think you know who’ll stand by whom, the plot reverses. Old alliances are broken, new bonds are formed.

The day I equate with extreme fickle flip-floppedness (to coin my own tongue-twister of a term) was yesterday, recognized as Palm Sunday by most of the Christian world. The day marks Jesus’ triumphant entry into Jerusalem, astride a donkey and cheered by the multitudes waving palm branches and yelling “Hosanna,” a term of rejoicing. Picture the Patriots’ Superbowl Championship parade in Boston with JC as a bearded Tom Brady in sandals, and you’ve got the idea.

Accounts of the event are pretty clear that the masses lining the dusty roads saw Jesus as a hero, and yet, five days later those same fans would be calling for his execution. This story line is to me what makes Palm Sunday so chilling:  the mood is exultant, and yet we all know what’s coming.  This story isn’t going to change. Any joy is fleeting and it won’t be long before those palm branches are ground into dust.

I recently finished a wonderful book called Euphoria, by a fellow Mainer, Lily King.  It’s extremely well-written and meticulously plotted, and although it’s not crime fiction,  I highly recommend it. 

In it, there’s a character who returns unexpectedly and is given a hero’s welcome, with night after night of revelry, dining and drink, but after several days the crowd starts to turn. In church yesterday, that scene from the book came to mind, and I wondered if it’s in the very nature of crowds to be fickle. Are we like a school of fish, swimming together happily in one direction, and then suddenly veering en masse toward a new clump of coral?

The crime writer in me sees the drama in reversals. A happy parade is just a happy parade. But take that procession and, instead of building toward an even happier conclusion, make things start to sour. Something rotten in the state of Denmark – or, Jerusalem. People muttering in their market stalls, Pharisees plotting behind closed doors.  Make a trusted advisor turn traitor. Things get dark, so dark that it seems there will never be light again. A horrible death. The grief of friends, the anguish of a mother. The bitter end of a story… or is it?

Easter Sunday gives yet another plot twist, probably one of the world’s most famous and unfathomable. Life arising from death – not the end of the story, but the beginning. Hard to beat that as a revelation, right?  But then I think back to those afternoons with the smell of spray starch hanging in the air, mingling with the scent of cigarette smoke, and I hear the strains of  As the World Turns, and I’m guessing the writers on that soap may have tried some form of resurrection as well. (The character in a coma comes to mind. Or – the ones you knew had died – and yet – they’re ba-a-a-a-a-k!)

Whatever your personal beliefs, I hope you are touched by the miraculous this week, something special and spiritual, whether it comes from a soap opera, a bouquet of daffodils, or the smile of a neighbor. Happy Easter, Happy Passover, and Happy Spring!

Weekend Update: March 28-29, 2015

Next week at Maine Crime Writers there will be posts by Kate Flora (Monday), special guest Karla Whitney (Tuesday), John Clark (Wednesday), Sarah Graves (Thursday), and on Friday the mini-blog tour of this year’s Agatha Award short story finalists (Kathy Lynn Emerson, Barb Goffman, Edith Maxwell, and Art Taylor) comes to Maine Crime Writers.

In the news department, here’s what’s happening with some of us who blog regularly at Maine Crime Writers:

Lea Wait will be Skyping with several schools during the coming week; most of the classes have read either her Agatha-nominated Uncertain Glory or Finest Kind. Later this spring she’s looking forward to taking several school groups on tours of Wiscasset and the old jail there …. the site of her historical novels for young people.

Kate Flora will be speaking at the Portland Public Library’s Brown Bag Lecture Series on Wednesday, April 8th at 12:00.

Dorothy Cannell, Barbara Ross, and Kate Flora will be doing at Chat with Champions on Thursday, April 9th at 10:00 a.m. at the Skidompha Library, 184 Maine Street in Damariscotta.

If you are looking for a fun event, a lot of Maine Crime bloggers and alums will be at the Portland Public Library on Friday, April 10th for a social gathering and brave two minute readings by Maine crime writers at Two Minutes in the Slammer. Dining afterward with one of your favorite writers. Last year, Crime Wave participants said they wanted more time to socialize–so here it is. Hope to see you there. And remember: this is not just for writers. If we gather a room full of librarians, that will be good fun. You ever see librarians party? Well…come on down.http://mainewriters.org/two-minutes-in-the-slammer-a-friday-night-social-for-the-2015-maine-crime-wave/

Time is running out to sign up for the Maine Crime Wave, our own mystery conference. More information here: http://mainewriters.org/2015-maine-crime-wave/

A question for you. We here at MCW are gearing up for National Library Week, when we get to celebrate Maine libraries and Maine librarians. If you’d like to be our guest, or suggest someone who should be a guest, please let us know.

An invitation to readers of this blog: Do you have news relating to Maine, Crime, or Writing? We’d love to hear from you. Just comment below to share. Don’t forget that comments are entered for a chance to win our wonderful basket of books and the very special moose and lobster cookie cutters.

And a reminder: If your library, school, or organization is looking for a speaker, we are often available to talk about the writing process, research, where we get our ideas, and other mysteries of the business. Contact Kate Flora: mailto: kateflora@gmail.com

Coming Soon: The Body in the Birches from Katherine Hall Page

Today’s special guest blogger is MCW’s friend and frequent contributor, Katherine Hall Page, giving us a glimpse into her forthcoming mystery.

The epigraph for The Body in the Birches (May, 2015) is from the master of them all, Oscar Wilde. He wrote: “After a good dinner one can forgive anybody, even one’s own relations”. Definitely food for thought, especially when considering inheritance—that all important familial divvying up. Nice and convenient when it’s laid out in an iron clad will, but more often than not people kick off the mortal coil without making final provisions. This may be because they have trouble facing death, the basic fact of life—i.e. “I’m not going”. Or equally common is simply the inability, or desire, to decide who gets what—the “I won’t be here, so let the chips fall where” attitude.

The Body in the Birches is the story of what happens in one family as a result of not naming an heir. The late Priscilla Proctor, childless, could not bring herself to choose who among her nieces and nephews should inherit The Birches, a much beloved “cottage” on Sanpere Island in Penobscot Bay, Maine. It is treasured by them all, and is a treasure—with substantial waterfront looking toward the Camden Hills plus several acres of land. Far in size and scope from what Mainers call a “camp”, Priscilla knows it would be difficult to share decisions about the maintenance of the house and other matters. There can be only one owner. She leaves instructions for her husband Paul to inform all who are interested in taking on The Birches to spend as much of the month of July as possible there for a kind of audition. Paul—not a Proctor—will choose who inherits at the end of the month. It was Paul, who has life tenancy, who came up with the plan to spare his increasingly agitated wife the decision and presumably Priscilla died at peace. Peace does not reign among the living, however, and if the book reminds you of the film, “Kind Hearts and Coronets”, my job will have been happily fulfilled.

Faith Fairchild, my series sleuth, and family are conveniently living next door to The Birches at The

Pines with Ursula Rowe while the Fairchild cottage, definitely a cottage, gains a much needed addition. The kids are growing fast and Faith’s husband, the Reverend Tom, wants a room of his own where he can get away to ponder the mysteries of the universe and watch the Red Sox, who qualify depending on the season. As usual, there is a great deal of food in the book and several lovely murders with extremely unusual suspects. We close at summer’s end strolling around the Blue Hill Fair eating the Fry King and Queen’s fries doused with vinegar.

I loved writing this book—well, perhaps not the actual writing it down part, but the writing it in my head part. As with all the ones set in Maine, it gave me a chance to write about the place itself. This summer will be our 57th on Deer Isle and, counting two weeks on a lake near Readfield when I was four, 58th overall! We were not rusticators, although my father did swim every day in what I didn’t realize was very cold water until I was much older and went for a dip on Cape Cod. It was like swimming in bath water! Who knew? I still swim every day both because it is now thoroughly engrained and also because perhaps I’ll keep longer. And considering my parents had the foresight to purchase a plot where they now rest, I should be on the island for good

The Body in the Birches is the 22nd in Katherine Hall Page’s Faith Fairchild series. She has also published for middle grade and YA readers as well as a collection of short stories, Small Plates (2014), and a series cookbook, Have Faith in your Kitchen. She has been awarded Agathas for Best First, Best Novel, and Best SS and also was nominated for additional Agathas, an Edgar, Macavity, Mary Higgins Clark and the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance Literary Award for Crime Fiction. She lives in Maine and Massachusetts.